The Hollywood Dream (6): Griffith Park
Stuck for last minute gift ideas? How about a 4000+ acre park?
As Christmas presents go, a perpetual wilderness takes some beating.
On December 16, 1896, Griffith J. Griffith marched into Los Angeles City Hall carrying a roll of paper, trailed by a nearly 50-strong entourage. With a flourish, he handed over the scroll which, in typically verbose style, declared his intent:
“...desiring to aid the advancement and happiness of the city that has been for so long and always will be my home, I am impelled to make an offer, the acceptance of which by yourselves, acting for the people, I believe will be a source of enjoyment and pride to my fellows and add a charm to our beloved city.”
He offered the City of Los Angeles
“...over two thousand acres of tillable land, and some of the most romantic scenery of any park in the world. Not only will it be the largest city park in the world, but its diversity of picturesque valley, hill, river and mountain, with so many varieties of trees and its rich undergrowth, render it susceptible of being cultivated into the most beautiful of parks.”
Who bestows such a generous gift, and why?
The self-styled “Colonel” Griffith was an outlier among the moneyed men who controlled Los Angeles in the 1890s, although he moved among them and sought their acceptance. Their power came from the land they owned and on which they built. Oblivious to the paradox, most of the men who settled in the area because they had fallen in love with the wild golden slopes of the Cahuenga Valley were seized by the impulse to tame them, to cover them in roads and houses, to hack away the sage and the toyon bushes and cultivate a “god-fearing suburb” in their place. Only Griffith split from the pack of developers by wanting to keep the land exactly as it was: preservation, not desecration, even if it meant giving it away.
How did he come to be so enlightened? His resumé was similar to the other speculators who purchased large tracts during the land grab in the early 1880s. These men had mostly come from nothing yet had accrued fortunes through hardscrabble entrepreneurship and the opportunities offered to first generation American immigrants in the 19th century.
Early in life, “Grif” hitched his wagon to a wandering star. He was born in South Wales in 1850, on a farm near Bridgend. In his mid-teens he left his impoverished family behind to seek his fortune in Pennsylvania. He spent the next 16 years clambering from one speculative opportunity to another, working first for a carriage maker and a brewer, before heading to San Francisco and finding his niche as a journalist who specialized in mining. In exchange for company stock, he wrote puff pieces about the potential for investment in mines. In at least one instance (as later reported by the Los Angeles Herald) Grif sold his holdings and was long gone before the rubes the newspaper articles lured in discovered their investments were worthless.
Not every stock certificate was a dud, however. Grif made money from shady deals but also amassed a fortune through his interest in successful gold, silver, and lead mining operations across North America. He decided to settle in the Los Angeles area in 1882, where he bought 4075 acres of the 6,600-acre Rancho Los Feliz. He used it to reinvent himself as a gentleman rancher, putting the quasi-shady stock deals firmly in his past. His new property, a bundle of craggy hillsides, flat arable land, and river frontage, became home to “6,000 sheep, 50 horses, 150 head of Holstein cattle, hundreds of Berkshire hogs, and crops that included alfalfa, corn, beans and barley”.
As a wealthy local landowner, Grif mixed socially with the Wilcoxes and the Whitleys (and was eventually on the board of the H.J. Whitley company). He wore a frock coat and gold-headed cane and opened an office on Main Street. He was elected to the nominating committee of the Los Angeles Board of Trade in 1885. He began referring to himself as “Colonel”, despite only ever serving as a “Major of rifle practice” in the California National Guard. He supported the long term development of Los Angeles by selling his substantial water rights to the city for a reasonable $50,000. In 1885, he advertised a shift away from ranching, offering his land for rent. His new business involved “Money to loan in sums of from $1000 to $50,000 at a low rate of interest. Only those with the best of security need apply.”
Despite all this social climbing, the Angeleno elite considered Grif an arriviste, unworthy of their full respect. According to Mike Eberts, author of the Griffith Park Centennial History, he was variously described as “a midget egomaniac”, and a “roly-poly pompous little fellow” who “had an exaggerated strut like a turkey gobbler”. Grif certainly had an uncivilized streak. Three days after his announcement of his move into banking, the Los Angeles Sunday Times gleefully reported on a fist fight that broke out in his office after Grif refused to pay a stonemason. Grif grabbed an inkstand to batter his opponent’s face, then the two men “wrenched out two of the stair banisters, and used them for clubs until they were separated.” This was bawdy frontier behavior, unbecoming in a nascent metropolis.
Grif tried to fix his respectability issues with a strategic marriage. One of his banking clients, Louis Mesmer, was a local dignitary whose extensive landholdings included the grand United States Hotel, and whose daughter, Mary Agnes Christina, owned a million dollars (in 1880s money) of land in her own right, as well as being named in the will of the recently deceased André Briswalter, who had left her 240 acres of farmland just south of downtown — a prime development site. Grif wooed her through the fall of 1886 and set a date in 1887. However, just 10 days before the ceremony, Grif broke off the engagement (in a letter presented as evidence at his later trial) claiming his bride to be was “a tool in the hands and at the mercy of your father, and the object of a crafty imposition”, and that he had been misled about the value of her dowry.
This horrified the devout Catholic Mesmers, who could not bear the thought of Tina’s reputational ruin. They made a deal with Grif to give full control of Tina’s inheritance to their future son-in-law ASAP. ASAP being on the wedding day—Grif sauntered away from the conjugal feast to take care of business at the courthouse, where $250,000 was transferred into his name.
But Grif still didn’t feel like he belonged, especially as he continued to be plagued by misfortune. The ostrich farming venture failed amid a public sex scandal (and yes, the ostrich farm deserves its own post). He had to return from Europe to fight for his wife’s inheritance in court. Then in 1891, he was shot by one of his tenants, Frank Burkett, who then turned the gun on himself. He even advertised his ranch for sale, but there were no takers.
Was he cursed? Grif’s nemesis, local journalist Major Horace Bell, liked to spread rumors about the wrath of Dona Petranilla Feliz, who was supposedly swindled out of her Los Feliz Rancho inheritance in 1863. Just before she dropped dead (so the story goes) she doomed her swindlers to an early death, and blighted the land and its future possessors. Although the curse may be more of an entertaining yarn than historical fact, subsequent owners of Los Feliz didn’t have the best of luck, suffering financial losses and violent ends. Grif, the last private owner, also struggled to pay taxes on the land. His decision to offload it to the city may not have been entirely altruistic. As well as repairing his reputation–at least until a few years later–it saved him money.
Whatever Grif’s reasoning, his gift remains magnificent. The 4000+ acres of untouched and untouchable wilderness glowering to the north east of Hollywood has played a vital role in shaping the psyche of the area. It’s hard to be too urban or civilized when rattlesnakes and mountain lions live on your doorstep. Griffith Park has provided the backdrop for countless movies and television shows. It hosts 10 million visitors a year, who walk the trails, play golf or tennis, visit the Observatory, ride horses, or watch Shakespeare plays in the grounds of the old zoo. Throughout the 20th century it was an important space for LGBTQ Angelenos, who staged “Gay In” picnics in the early 1970s to bring the community together in public. In private, gay men turned the secluded caves and thickets into cruising grounds—as eloquently chronicled in Numbers (1967) by John Rechy. It’s awash with ghosts and legends, mysterious deaths, body dump sites, and there’s even a haunted picnic table. What more could you ask for as a Christmas gift?
As for Grif himself, well, the gratitude of the city didn’t last long. More of that in the New Year.
Wishing you Happy and Peaceful Holidays, Haunted Path-takers, however you choose to celebrate.